Rebecca Brown's Interview with
Kate Jennings
Author of
Moral Hazard

Rebecca :
Kate, I both relished & dreaded reading your latest book. Your writing draws us into your nightmare sojourn both high up in the World Trade Towers, as well into the despair you witnessed as your husband disappeared into the unchartable terrors of Alzheimer's disease. Did you feel this story just had to be written, that you had no choice in the matter?

Kate :
I worked at several investment banks, one in the World Financial Center, which is just over West Street from Ground Zero, & another on Wall Street itself. For a number of years I walked across the World Trade Center plaza & skirted the towers on my way to work. Or I went underground via the concourse.

When I began the book, I had no idea whether yoking together Alzheimer's & banking would work, whether it would make a compelling story. Certainly, an editor would've said, “Are you crazy? Alzheimer's? Banking?” (A few said that when I had finished the book!) But that wasn't my starting point. I began Moral Hazard wanting to write a novel that was set in New York City -- not the New York City of twenty-somethings -- clubs, love affairs, drugs -- but the often harsh, sometimes hilarious world of work, of adults navigating personal & professional obligations.

Hence the structure of the book, with Cath, a Wall Street speechwriter with a prickly sense of humor, commuting, chapter by chapter as it were, between her husband's Alzheimer's & a financial services corporation. In her view, these two worlds are equally demented, equally surreal. “Her view” is the operative phrase here. No moral absolutes. Life is filled with hard choices. We do the best we can, & sometimes we don't. Cath is someone learning the hard way not to be judgmental, not to be impatient.

It had to be written only in the sense that I needed an advance from a publisher to stay out of corporate life. As you can see, like my narrator, Cath, I'm a pragmatist.

Rebecca :
Do you see a correlation between the booms & busts of the financial industry with the progress of Alzheimer's?

Kate :
One of the inferences of the book is that Alzheimer's is a metaphor for the financial industry -- & the financial industry in recent years is a metaphor for Alzheimer's. In its inability to recall busts during booms or booms during busts, its infantile rants (about regulation, conflicts of interest, & the “sanctity” of markets), our banks exhibit the same chronic forgetfulness & decline as an Alzheimer's patient.

Rebecca :
Do you write on a computer, & how long did it take to complete Moral Hazard. Did you have any other titles in mind?

Kate :
I write on a computer. But I always edit on hard copy. & I read it aloud. It took about a year to complete the first draft -- quick for me -- followed by rewriting. That was a hard year -- I had to tie myself to my desk chair. Who'd be a writer?! First you have to live it, then you have to relive it to write the novel.

No other titles -- that one was too good to pass up! When I first heard the term used by a banker it stopped me in my tracks. The book is filled with moral hazards, large & small.

Rebecca :
Tell us about your life as a feminist from Down Under. What do you see as the state of feminism today, in America &worldwide?

Kate :
I became a feminist in 1969 -- the heyday of feminism activism. Some of us -- all veterans of left-wing activism -- had formed the first small feminist group in Australia, but we weren't getting any attention. So, in 1970, I gave a speech at a Vietnam Moratorium that was inflammatory, to say the least. The first shot across the bow. Believe me, they sat up & listened. & jeered. Went ballistic. What wild, rackety, extraordinary years they were!

Much has changed since then. Feminism & its ideas are common coin, so integrated into our daily lives that we don't remark on them. All the same, much still needs to be done, especially in non-industrialized countries. & in finance, which is the last bastion of male privilege.

The structure of Moral Hazard, with Cath's personal life illuminating her public life & vice versa, comes directly from a deeply held belief we had in those years: The personal is political. That idea is embedded in my DNA.

Rebecca :
Moral Hazard is written in a memoir form -- I felt as if you were indeed telling your own story. In your publicity pages, I discovered that much of Moral Hazard comes directly from your life experience. Why did you choose the form of fiction?

Kate :
While the book parallels my life & exhibits “the rage of experience” as one U.K. reviewer put, it is fiction. I did work on Wall Street for a time as a speechwriter, my husband died from Alzheimer's. But the reality in the book is highly stylized. Contrived. While the facts aren't necessarily true, the emotions are.

Reality was more awful, more messy than the book. & more heartening, in one respect. Through my husband's illness, I had the support of loving friends. & I made some enduring friendships downtown. Cath is, purposefully, very much alone, surrounded by men, observing men, commenting on them.

Rebecca :
As you learnt the more unsavory details of how the world of high-finance worked, what were your feelings?

Kate :
While I worked there, I didn't have much time to think about it. Like all caregivers, I was exhausted, putting one foot in front of the other. I was coming to some conclusions, but I was surrounded by people who believed the opposite. It was only after I left that I sat down & tried to make sense of what was going on. I'm certainly being vindicated by current events -- by Enron, Global Crossing, Worldcom. Although anyone with half a brain & one eye open could see all this coming. It's the product of a culture deregulation & also of stock options. Finance guys are known for being short-term in their thinking -- get the fee, make the trade, bring off a merger -- but stock options have made that even more true. Get that stock price up, cash in your options -- & the devil take the hindmost. Very corrupting.

Rebecca :
You write about the end-of-life care of a loved-one, & you touch on the delicate & disputable aspect of assisted dying. Why do you think society resists allowing us to die when we choose?

Kate :
Some countries are more liberal -- one might even say more humane -- than others on this “issue.” The fact is modern medicine has outstripped our ethics. How many of us have had a parent or spouse say to us, “Don't let me get like that”? Meaning demented, diapered, drooling. So easy to say it, yet the odds are good that you, in fact, will end up “like that.” My husband said it to me when he was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I was struck by a case in Florida -- it's mentioned in the novel -- a man who shot his Alzheimer's wife. I wanted to get at the circumstances that would make someone do that -- that's what fiction is for. I'm not passing judgment, just trying to understand.

What I feel strongly about is the aggressive care that people with late-stage Alzheimer's receive. They're on heart drugs & antibiotics, they get flu shots & so forth, they are subjected to exploratory tests & surgery, even though they have no minds. & Alzheimer's sufferers are often so terrified, so distressed. Alzheimer's isn't a peaceful fade into nothingness or a happy state where you keep experiencing everything anew. Let the flu take them, don't do exploratory tests. Make them comfortable, let them go. To do otherwise is incredibly cruel.

Rebecca :
With the total destruction of the World Trade Towers & their surrounding communities, what do you think New York has lost?

Kate :
New York is still the infuriating, competitive, unforgiving, fractious city it has always been. Wouldn't live anywhere else.

Rebecca :
Have you attained a degree of healing & peace from writing this story? What are you up to now?

Kate :
These days, I have more moments of happiness, less guilt, but so much was burned out of me in those years. I've started a new novel. Gotta stay out of corporate life! Not that they would have me now. Sawed off that branch.

Rebecca :
Do catch my review of Kate Jennings' Moral Hazard -- I think you'll find it an exhilarating, provocative read!



Rebecca Brown
(Published July 14, 2002)